Inside each of us there are two wolves. One is on uppers and the other is on downers. If you feed only the wolf on uppers, you will race to every new thing and absorb yourself in it completely, staying at the forefront but eventually finding yourself scattered, unable to keep up, and longing for a time when your life was simpler. If you feed only the wolf on downers, you can hold tight to that simpler past that you remember through rose-colored glasses, but as you quietly attempt to relax into it without succumbing to boredom, you will find that each time you peek through the curtains, the world has run away without you a little further. That is to say, nostalgia and the pursuit of newness are both drugs.
I've been thinking about this a lot, trying to be more mindful of the roles that various technologies play in my life and more deliberate about the extent to which I allow them in. I think that, as with most things, there are tides that can pull you toward extremes in either direction if you're not careful. I take your point about an Amish lifestyle divorced from modern comforts and tools being a form of LARPing, but I know a lot of people who seem to have been shaped into a life of digital LARPing (DARPing?) that pursues a kind of online social credit more than any sort of self-discovery.
Certainly on a societal level, or even a species level, we move in a certain direction. We don't go "back" but sometimes we correct course. When we find that the lead in paint is killing us, paint doesn't go away; we just find a way to keep the paint while doing away with the lead. And problems with the modern world relating to new technologies are problems that we will continue to become more aware of and work to address, and I suspect we'll keep getting better at them. But on an individual level, while there is certainly room to pinpoint one of these problems and come up with a plan to address it, I think in a lot of cases, stepping back can be good for us. Much like what you've said here about getting fat due to an abundance of food, as an individual you could work to find a societal solution to the problem, but you can also just work hard on your own diet and be grateful to other people who are working to solve the problem on a larger level. I'm not sure that necessarily means you're LARPing in a fantasy world where food was more scarce (though if you're on the Paleo diet, you might be). Or maybe it's just that a little bit of LARPing can be good for us.
I'm not sure whether I'm actually disagreeing with anything you're saying. I suspect we're at similar places on this, just sitting on a fence and looking at two fields of grass that aren't as green as some of the people on each side seem to believe the other side is. But it's been occupying my mind often enough for the last few months that whenever I see someone meditating on it, I find myself meditating right back.
That Star Traders run is now CWU. He really can't hide your runs anymore and he's getting really fucking bitchy and scared about it.
Inside each of us there are two wolves. One is on uppers and the other is on downers. If you feed only the wolf on uppers, you will race to every new thing and absorb yourself in it completely, staying at the forefront but eventually finding yourself scattered, unable to keep up, and longing for a time when your life was simpler. If you feed only the wolf on downers, you can hold tight to that simpler past that you remember through rose-colored glasses, but as you quietly attempt to relax into it without succumbing to boredom, you will find that each time you peek through the curtains, the world has run away without you a little further. That is to say, nostalgia and the pursuit of newness are both drugs.
I've been thinking about this a lot, trying to be more mindful of the roles that various technologies play in my life and more deliberate about the extent to which I allow them in. I think that, as with most things, there are tides that can pull you toward extremes in either direction if you're not careful. I take your point about an Amish lifestyle divorced from modern comforts and tools being a form of LARPing, but I know a lot of people who seem to have been shaped into a life of digital LARPing (DARPing?) that pursues a kind of online social credit more than any sort of self-discovery.
Certainly on a societal level, or even a species level, we move in a certain direction. We don't go "back" but sometimes we correct course. When we find that the lead in paint is killing us, paint doesn't go away; we just find a way to keep the paint while doing away with the lead. And problems with the modern world relating to new technologies are problems that we will continue to become more aware of and work to address, and I suspect we'll keep getting better at them. But on an individual level, while there is certainly room to pinpoint one of these problems and come up with a plan to address it, I think in a lot of cases, stepping back can be good for us. Much like what you've said here about getting fat due to an abundance of food, as an individual you could work to find a societal solution to the problem, but you can also just work hard on your own diet and be grateful to other people who are working to solve the problem on a larger level. I'm not sure that necessarily means you're LARPing in a fantasy world where food was more scarce (though if you're on the Paleo diet, you might be). Or maybe it's just that a little bit of LARPing can be good for us.
I'm not sure whether I'm actually disagreeing with anything you're saying. I suspect we're at similar places on this, just sitting on a fence and looking at two fields of grass that aren't as green as some of the people on each side seem to believe the other side is. But it's been occupying my mind often enough for the last few months that whenever I see someone meditating on it, I find myself meditating right back.